Get Schooled

By luvs2teach

June 13, 2007 5:00 PM | Link to this

LOL - and I just posted it to my myspace!

Seriously, not only do I browse the videos for apprpriate ones to use in my class, I have given making a movie as a project choice to my kids a couple times this year (and some did indeed post them on youtube - NOT at my instruction, I might add).

My gifted classes did very well with the assignments - most chose to create a video rather than the other available choices. Some of my on-level kids did it also, and they were very good - one of my least engaged kids throughout the year actually did a great video on Newton’s three laws of motion (at least he’ll leave my class knowing that one thing).

I had several “Bill Nye the Science Guy” type videos, newscast or PSA type, and some music videos. One of the best was to the hip-hop song “This Is Why I’m Hot” - it was about global warming!

By catlady

June 13, 2007 5:19 PM | Link to this

I am having a hard time mustering up anything on this blog topic(?) (silence is golden!), but L2T can find something insightful to add to just about anything! Great ideas, Luvs!

By luvs2teach

June 13, 2007 5:31 PM | Link to this

Thanks catlady - I first tried the videos about 6 years ago, and it’s gotten much better. For one thing, many of my kids have access to equipment at home - and editing software! (and I’m not at a super rich school either). I also learned to make it a choice, and not the only option - that way access to equipment isn’t an issue. It was a real logistical nightmare to try to do it all in class.

I also got much better at making the kids storyboard it first - that is key - otherwise they spend time just playing around, and they’ll tell me “Oh, I’m working on it at home.” I have to have checkpoints for the work, and I have to be strict about deadlines - no excuses for “my battery died.”

I grade it on a rubric, too - as far as showing them in class, the kids love it, and if we’re doing presentations, and one class runs short, I can show videos from other classes - they love to see what they each have done! They also get better throughout the year as they try to outdo each other.

My proudest one this year? I had a group of 6 ESOL students, too embarassed to get up in class to do a presentation, create a great video on comets - they did it like a newscast, and they included a “model comet” made out of ice cream as well as a clay-mation section of dinosaurs dying when the comet crashes into them - it was amazing.

By mmm

June 13, 2007 5:47 PM | Link to this

I don’t know which meeting you attended, but the chartering subcommittee meeting this morning was a very visible statement that individuals citizens do still care about. There were at least 50 people from Oconee County protesting a charter application that seeks to have a primary attendance area in a new high $$ development, a secondary attendance area and the “rest of the county” third. (the contention clearly is that the affluent are going to get their own school that only they can get into and the rest of the generally poor local blacks won’t get in.) It was very moving to have an older black gentleman explain that he went to school in segregated school and the books that his school received were “in route to the dump”. He doesn’t trust that their present school board’s approval of this charter is right, because the school board also approved that many years ago. Reporters were snapping the whole time.

I must say that I am used to charter fireworks resulting from a lack of goodwill between a school board and a nonprofit that wants to start a new school, but this lack of trust between a community and their own elected board, which seems to be hand in hand with a developer that wants to serve only the development is new.

By Bridget Gutierrez

June 13, 2007 6:08 PM | Link to this

Hi, mmm. Unfortunately, I missed that meeting. I was sitting in the Rules Committee getting the latest update on the new high school graduation requirements at the time that the Charter Committee was meeting.

Can’t be in two places at once.

But I understand that some of the parents also held a protest about the charter proposal after the meeting. Another AJC reporter was at the scene and we should have a story about it in tomorrow’s newspaper.

By mmm

June 14, 2007 11:48 AM | Link to this

Bridget—I’m trying to decide whether to write a letter to the editor about that one-some things I need to keep my head down for, but we also need true governance that simply says this “isn’t in the public interest” even if it meets the letter of the law. The fact that it made it though the local board is a good case for why a 3 party contract for chartering is a good thing. Chartering is only a process, you can never fully legislate the intent. That is what governance is supposed to do.

By Teach

June 20, 2007 10:55 AM | Link to this

Too bad Gwinnett County Public Schools block “You Tube” from viewing via a school Internet connection - this clip isn’t the only video with educational value. Censorship at it’s best!!!